by Lotte Hammer
Over the course of the last few words, Simonsen had moved toward the door. His intention was to slip away as soon as he was done with his little lecture. But this backfired completely. Malte Borup was standing outside with a piece of paper. He had been standing there for a while without daring to interrupt, and his waiting time only increased when Pedersen rushed over and waved him away.
Simonsen snapped, “Can it wait, Arne?”
The question was ignored and thus received its answer.
“She called me about an hour ago. Just as you predicted.”
“Who called?”
“Anni Staal from the Dagbladet.”
“And what did she say?”
“Well, it took a while. She was very careful and naturally I played along and was guarded… yes, it was a bit of theater—”
“And what was the conclusion?” Simonsen interrupted.
“That I will pass along any news when I have any, and she… what shall I say… will compensate me for my troubles. Dammit, Simon. It’s like a bad American TV series; this kind of thing isn’t like you at all. And what will I do with the mon—”
Again Simonsen interrupted, this time with his palms raised defensively in front of him. “That last bit—I don’t know anything about that.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. It was Planck’s idea, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, for the most part.”
“It’s illogical, almost amateurish.”
“He has a feeling it may come in handy.”
“Illogical. Dare I say, idiotic.”
Finally, Simonsen allowed himself some time to talk. He said quietly, but intently, “You are right, but I have worked with Kasper Planck for over twenty years, and as I stand here I can give you at least two occasions when his illogical and perhaps silly feelings have saved a person’s life. Not to mention the many times these illogical and silly feelings have solved a case. But you are naturally welcome to back out of the arrangement, if you don’t—”
This time it was Pedersen’s turn to interrupt. He wrapped up the conversation in a conciliatory way: “No, it’s fine. I just wanted to let you know.”
Pedersen stepped aside; Malte Borup was next in line. The young man hurried up to his boss as soon as he saw that the coast was clear.
Simonsen unfolded the piece of paper he handed him, scrutinized it, and then asked, “What do I do with this?”
“It is everywhere, and it’s spreading as we speak. Blogs, newsgroups, sites, even the really big ones. Fox TV has it as a top story, as well as MTV. It’s like a supervirus but people are taking it home themselves and sending it on, and you can already buy T-shirts from …”
He fell silent, looking at his new boss’s face, and wrapped things up with a “that is, maybe.”
Simonsen listened with forced patience. Impatience was a bad habit with him when he was involved in a big case, but in opposition to the rest of his staff, this young man read him poorly. In any case, he was convinced that he was up in the red-alert area, sure that what he had to tell was urgent. For his part, Simonsen lacked the command of the details in this matter to determine its urgency. He glanced at the paper again. It was hard to let it be.
The sketch was disarmingly simple with its few striking black lines. The artist had captured a dark, relentless gravity with sureness. The perspective followed the line of sight that one of the final victims might have had, immediately before the trapdoor opened. The viewer of the sketch looked, so to speak, through the eyes of the victim. Slightly ahead and to the side one could see the backs of the heads of his already executed companions. Some bars drawn on the right indicated that the events were taking place in a gymnasium, but what primarily drew one’s interest were the spectators. At the top was a judge enthroned as a slightly moth-eaten heavenly father, half god, half clown, with a dusty accoutrements next to his limp hand. The law book, a thunderbolt, and scales. A tragicomic relic from the storeroom of antiquity with a vacant stare and dead flies sprinkled in his wig. Below him were children of all ages sitting on the floor, staring with sad eyes at the convicted; present in the moment, as dozens of small alternatives. Patient, just, without mercy. One could almost feel the rope tightening around his neck, and Simonsen shivered. The title was “Too Late.”
Chapter 26
Even though many of you know me well, there are significant events in my life that you do not know anything about and that unfortunately continue to haunt me. I will never be able to shake free of them even if I were to live to a hundred.”
Erik Mørk was nervous. His beginning faltered and lacked conviction, and he felt an unfamiliar lack of control. Despite his low voice, he had had the full attention of his audience from his very first words. Most of them were employees in his small business and a handful were his personal friends. The remainder were strangers that Per Clausen had rallied. From where and how he did not know, only that they were one hundred percent loyal. And it was in a long look by one of these unknowns that he found the support to continue—an unusually pretty girl with blond curls and supportive blue eyes. He raised his voice slightly and launched into what he had to say.
“When I was five years old, my father died, and my stepfather moved in. From that day forward until I went to an orphanage at age ten, I was raped three, four, or five times a week. Summer and winter, weekend and weekday, morning and evening, year after year after year. Sexual abuse became such an integral part of my childhood that I believed for a long time that it was the way things were, that all kids went through what I did. It was simply not something one talked about, in the same way we don’t talk about shitting. We do it, but we rarely mention it. As an adult I realized that I had been both right and wrong. Right in that this is not something we talk about, wrong in thinking that the rape of a child is normal. It is rather more common than most people imagine, or rather bother to imagine, but it is not, of course, completely normal either.”
He avoided cliché-laden words such as taboo and a sense of guilt. The connections were simple and immediately understandable. To bring psychology into it would be a mistake.
“As a ten-year-old I tried to murder my mother, which was illogical since in my eyes my childhood had been normal. Why I did not target my stepfather is another question. He was my tormentor, not her. In fact she warned me when he was on his way—by screwing up the volume on the television. I tried to crush her skull with a cast-iron pot that I threw from the window of my room one day when she was in the yard with the laundry. We lived on the third floor and I missed the mark by several meters but the intention was unmistakable so I ended up at the Kejserstræde Home for Children. The first day I was there I was beaten up. Everyone received that welcome. When I crawled into bed that evening—black-and-blue like one giant bruise—I was the happiest child alive.”
He looked out at his audience. The atmosphere was intense. No one drank or ate or looked at one another. Everyone was following him intently—motionless, with bated breath, as he confided in them. He felt tears pressing at the back of his throat. Not because of his childhood but because they were listening and giving him respect, solidarity. His voice remained steady when he spoke again.
“Many people other than me have been abused and perhaps I belong to the lucky ones, however damaged I have been. A more tragic example is my little sister. She replaced me when I went to the children’s home, but unfortunately she was more frail than I and she never got over her wounds. One morning she sat down on the coastal railway line, a cloth over her head. She was twenty-two years old. The train driver was granted early retirement. He only lasted three years. Evil metastasizes.”
He regretted the expression as soon as it left his lips. It was too medical and the image too stilted. It had sounded good in his head. He continued, somewhat irritated.
“I’ve often wondered what she was thinking about when she heard the train come screeching, its brakes on full. My stepfather? Nothing? Herself? Me? I will never get an answer but I keep asking the question, and t
he day she died I promised her that when I got the opportunity I would write her obituary. Not by telling her story—it is too banal and will be forgotten—but by asking a string of questions. Today I have the financial means and I intend to use them. The moment is right. The five executed men in Bagsværd were all active pedophiles, each with numerous abuses on their conscience. As you know, the rumors have been swirling for a while and my source in the homicide unit tells me that the police will confirm them in the next few days but that the information is being temporarily withheld. There is subsequently no doubt that the sexual abuse of children will soon become a dominant topic in the media. My questions will line up in the wind, show another truth, give another perspective.”
He turned on the projector with rehearsed timing to avoid too much of a focus on the dead men, and everyone naturally looked up at the image.
“This advertisement was in all the papers this morning, big and small.”
He gave them a minute while they read with amazement, then he tossed out his calculation.
“It is, of course, an unverified number, but many researchers estimate that between one and two percent of the population has been sexually abused in their childhood, which is to say, that around five thousand children between the ages of five and ten years are at this time being victimized. I myself was raped some eight hundred times as a child, but perhaps I was an unlucky outlier among the unfortunate. I place the estimate of average rapes for the average abused child in this age group at two hundred. Each of you can now try to make these calculations on your own but I’ll spare you the trouble. My guess is that every single day around five hundred children are abused in Denmark. If I am right, then tell me, what is the biggest problem in our society? The day cares? Schools? Freeways? Or is it the five hundred children who will be raped tomorrow?”
He paused. The statistics created a certain distance, as statistics always did, and the intense silence from earlier was gone. It was time to come in for the landing.
“As the ad says, I want to try to get people to make their own assessment and I want your help to do this but you have to decide if you will do so or not. Those of you who are my co-workers also have a choice. You can take the next three weeks off fully paid and without using your vacation, or you can stay here and help me. If you feel that you can’t engage with this, then I would rather that you stay away. Now I want you to get up for a while. Walk around and talk to each other, think it over—and then report back what choice you have made.”
He turned off the projector.
“Let me end by telling you that I once knew a wise man who has unfortunately passed away. He asked me if I believed that the world could be changed by a handful of people fighting for a new order and he gave me the answer himself, which is as ordinary as it is true, that the world has always been changed in that way.”
Erik Mørk waited eagerly for any preliminary indications. In the scenarios he spun out at night he had imagined a string of different reactions, but none of them matched up with reality. The woman straight ahead of him was apparently speaking for many, and in advance he had written off her as too analytical, unmoved by emotions. But he was wrong.
“I don’t need more time. Just tell me what to do.”
Chapter 27
The night was cold and the Climber was freezing on the square in Allerslev.
From time to time he slapped his arms around himself, but it didn’t help much. Through his work he was used to being exposed to the elements and he had years of experience in dressing for the weather. Despite all this, he had underestimated the cold of the night and his sinewy body did not carry much in the way of extra padding as in-built protection for the chilly north wind that was sweeping over the square with increasing intensity.
A gust of wind—a little stronger than he cared for—caused him to look up into the crown of the tree he was standing under. The upper branches were illuminated both by the streetlamps and by the clear white moon. The tree was ready to be felled and could not take too much wind. He narrowed his eyes and concluded that there was no immediate danger of the tree coming down on its own. In a short time his victim would be arriving for work. It was now more than half an hour since the morning papers had been delivered, tossed helterskelter in front of the hot-dog stand. He shook himself again and jumped back behind the tree trunk for shelter.
Suddenly he noticed a man with a bottle in his hand unsteadily making his way across the square, aiming directly for him. He retreated farther into the shadows. Shortly thereafter, urine ran out on both sides of him and he heard the man mumbling, without being able to make out his words. He carefully pulled his cap visor down in order to conceal his face lest he be discovered. Then he mouthed into the night, “Not this time, Allan, no one is that lucky.”
The words were directed to the hot-dog vendor. At that moment, the light in the stand went on. The darkness gave way and for the next couple of seconds the Climber held his breath until he heard the man on the other side of the tree leave. He peeked out hesitantly and followed the drunk with his eyes until he turned a corner. Then he took his stick and crossed the square to the hot-dog stand.
The vendor was bent over the newspaper bundles and did not immediately realize that he had a visitor. It was the voice, that well-known voice that he could never mistake, that made him look up with a start.
“Good morning, Allan. Give my regards to your brother.”
With his solid beech stick the Climber rammed the man in the skull. His body collapsed in a limp heap, while his head landed neatly on a bundle of newspapers. Blood flowed from his nose out over the latest news. The examiner took a step to the left and put all his strength behind the next blow. He was skilled with an ax and had no trouble striking his victim right on the neck. Ten seconds later he was back at his tree, where he paid no heed to the noise and started up his saw.
An earsplitting crash rent the morning asunder. The sound wave thundered down the street, bouncing off the building walls, shaking the earth, and rousing the town from its slumber.
The Climber smiled out into the dark and gave himself time to savor the sight of his handiwork before he disappeared.
Chapter 28
On the square in Allerslev where the Climber had felled his tree some five hours earlier, a police photographer picked up a newspaper. An ad had caught her gaze. The wind tugged in the paper and she smoothed down the sides to reveal the advertisement. She read, disgusted, but could not tear her eyes from the questions. An emergency technician came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I think you should move back, little lady.”
The phrase pissed her off and she turned angrily, but discovered that she knew the man. He grinned.
“You’ll have to excuse me, but when I saw that it was you I couldn’t help myself. And you really are too close. There’s a great deal of power in this kind of tree, and unpredictable tensions. Haven’t you ever heard of trees felled by the wind? A heavy branch could squash you like a little bird and that would be unfortunate. One death is enough.”
He nodded in the direction of the trunk and she followed his gaze. The gigantic tree filled most of the square. Five people were busy working around the top of the tree, all men. They were working intently but gently with their small chainsaws in toward the crushed hot-dog stand. She moved back and let the newspaper flutter away in the wind. The entire area was awash in papers and one more or less wouldn’t matter. The EMT walked with her.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I am. I’ve worked all night and should be in bed. How long do you think it’ll be take before I can get started?”
“Ten minutes at most, then we’ll be in. Where were you working tonight?”
“At the Pathology Institute in Copenhagen. It’s really tough, pretty morbid, but superinteresting. I’m part of a team of facial surgeons, artists, pathologists, and computer experts. Some of them international. All of us under the direction of a single lovable, dictatorial
old man who unfortunately doesn’t hold sleep in high regard. I only made it back to Odense at ten, and was called out here after that.”
“Is it the pedophiles from Bagsværd?”
“Yes. That is, not that I know for sure if they were pedophiles. It’s hard to tell when people are dead.”
A police technician called out to her. He pointed to a half-empty bottle of beer at the foot of the tree. She looked questioningly at the emergency medical technician and stepped forward only when he indicated with a nod that she could safely approach. She prepared her camera. The brand of beer was Elephant. She crouched in front of it and noticed the pungent stench of urine. She zoomed in on the bottle and got to work without allowing herself to be distracted by the smell. Only when she was finished did she wrinkle up her nose and tilt up her head to take a blessedly deep breath. At almost exactly the same time, there came a call that an entry had been created.
The same technician who had pointed out the bottle led her to the corpse. The man had been knocked to the ground and he lay on his stomach, his head turned toward her, nailed to the floor. He was impaled by a thick branch that entered at the base of his spine and exited through his belly, as if a vengeful arrow had been fired in heavenly fury. Even at first glance she started with surprise, which her colleague misread. He wrapped a reassuring arm around her. She pushed him away and stared in disbelief at the dead man. There was no doubt in her mind.
